In classroom situations, students are often reluctant to ask a question if they feel they are the only student who does not understand. Some of this reluctance derives from basic shyness, or fear of seeming different, or fear of seeming more or less intelligent. In reality, however, many other students have the same difficulty.
There have been numerous electronic-based techniques devised for enabling a teacher more easily to convey information and understanding to a class, and improving class participation. Such electronic classroom teaching aids assist a teacher in breaking through the reluctance that students have to participating actively in class. Enabling students to respond individually and confidentially by electronic means to questions posed by the teacher can help to break through some of the shyness or reluctance a student otherwise may exhibit.
One example of a conventional student response system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,764,120. This system is intended to collect data of a limited nature (e.g. responses to multiple-choice questions) from a number of classrooms. Specifically, a student response system is provided which centrally processes student response data received from a plurality of classrooms. The system includes a main controller coupled to an instructor's terminal in each of the classrooms. The system also includes a plurality of student response keypads in each of the classrooms as well as a plurality of student data controllers associated with each of the classrooms wherein each student data controller is coupled to a group of keypads to accumulate data therefrom. The main controller is responsive to commands from an instructor's terminal to control each of the student data controllers in the instructor's classroom to accumulate data from the keypads in a particular manner for transmission to the main controller which then processes the data.
Despite such electronic-based techniques, however, students are often hesitant to participate due to their lack of knowledge regarding the learning difficulties of other students. If students knew, however, that other students were similarly confused, they would be more likely to ask questions, and the learning process would be improved.